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Textile Treasures of Asia and the Power of Cloth

In an age awash with graphic images on television and the Web, in film and in print, it is hard to imagine a world in which the hopes and fears, the very structure of society were literally woven into the patterns of cloth. But visitors to the Textile Museum in Washington have a chance to step back into that time at the exhibition "Textiles for This World and Beyond: Treasures From Insular Southeast Asia" (through Sept. 18).

With more than 60 textiles culled from the museum's collection, Mattiebelle Gittinger, the research associate for Southeast Asian textiles who organized the show, leads a thought-provoking exploration into the importance of textiles in Indonesian and Malaysian daily life, showing the ways communities used them to negotiate between the human and spirit worlds, warning off evil spirits and beckoning the gods.

In that part of the world textiles have been central to traditions and laws for thousands of years and are crucial to important ceremonies, from birth to marriage to death and beyond. In Borneo -- the huge island made famous in the West by Joseph Conrad -- no headhunting raid by an Iban tribe was complete without pua kumbu, powerful cloth woven to receive and honor the heads of slain enemies on the longhouse gallery. Though heads are no longer officially taken, pua kumbu are still treasured and brought out to attract the gods.

The show has several excellent 19th-century examples. In shades of rust, beige and indigo, pua kumbu capture the most ancient images of the Iban. In one, a maze of interlocking crocodiles writhe, some with tails encircling warriors carrying heads, others contentedly lolling with bellies full of men. In another, the mythical tiger spirit -- guardian of headhunters -- was so powerful that weavers "contained" it with borders.

Only a woman of great moral and psychic strength could, through dreams, contact the spirit world and translate those dreams into patterns. "If the design wasn't interpreted correctly, the weaver could fall sick," Ms. Gittinger noted, in a recent interview at the museum, adding that the task was so perilous that a woman would weave only two or perhaps three pua kumbu in her life. "Highest prestige in the village went to the men who were the best headhunters," she said, "and to women who wove the great designs. Although they couldn't participate in headhunting, they were totally equal to the men."

The pua kumbu are among the textiles the museum purchased in 2000 with a grant from the Christensen Fund, a private foundation in Palo Alto, Calif. The additions, Ms. Gittinger said, have made the museum's holdings among the most important in the world.

Of particular note is a pua sungkit, a ritual cloth made in Sarawak, on Borneo, in the mid-19th century. Dancing women (based on patterns from ancient Indian trade textiles) are topped by fierce Dyak warriors. Sungkit textiles are incredibly labor-intensive: the pattern is created by threading supplementary weft, or horizontal yarns, with a bone needle between regular wefts and wrapping them around the warp, vertical threads attached to the loom.

Sungkit are also extremely rare: Ms. Gittinger estimated that only two dozen exist. Thomas Murray, a dealer in Mill Valley, Calif., put the total somewhat higher but pointed out that there are only five dancing-figure sungkit of the style in the Textile Museum. "That pua sungkit alone is worth the trip," said Mr. Murray, who has studied and worked in Indonesian textiles since he first trekked through Borneo in 1980. "It is the best of the best."

This week, New Yorkers will have a chance to see a pua sungkit and other Borneo textiles at Mr. Murray's booth at the New York International Tribal and Textile Arts Show, which opens with a benefit preview tonight and continues through Tuesday at the Seventh Regiment Armory, 643 Park Avenue at 67th Street. And there will be Southeast Asian batik and ikat weavings offered by some of the other 75 dealers at the fair. Ikat, which means "to tie," are created by tying off small bundles of yarns with strips of palm to resist penetration of the traditional vegetable dyes (today, chemical dyes are more popular). Women, using looms strapped around their backs, weave the yarns into the design of the fabric.

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The cultural divides in the hierarchical societies of Indonesia's eastern islands were reflected in their textiles. On Savu, women's sarongs indicated membership in two female cliques, known as blossom groups or hubi, each with specific patterns and colors prescribed by an ancient myth of two battling sisters. "They say what it would be forbidden or impolite to say," Ms. Gittinger explained. As ideas of democracy spread, women developed a third type of cloth, using both red and blue in "neutral patterns" that any woman can wear. Examples of all three are in the show.

Textiles -- or their absence -- can act as a Richter scale, reflecting catastrophic events. After the eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, for example, there was a hiatus in weaving palepai, or ship cloths, the ceremonial hangings from Lampung, South Sumatra, filled with images of people, elephants, birds and ships. Many people died, villages were destroyed, and when new weavers took up their looms at the turn of the century, they no longer understood the subtler meanings of the symbols used in palepai.

Ms. Gittinger, who started her studies while living in Indonesia in the mid-1960's, noted that Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, was well versed in the power of cloth. He backed the creation of Batik Indonesia, a democratic mixture of fanciful patterns from Java's north coast (a swirl of Chinese, Indian and other influences) with more sedate, and status-driven, patterns of the Central Java courts. Embassy parties blazed with men and women in these brilliant batiks, and this custom continues in Jakarta today.

Other batiks playfully mirror Western pop culture. One in the show is animated with Flash Gordon figures. Indonesia in the 1930's had its own moral code, however, so the weaver banned all the comic's scantily clad maidens.

The Dutch were the first to study Indonesian textiles. In America, interest began with shows in the 1970's, including one at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art organized by Mary Kuhlenberg and another by Ms. Gittinger at the Textile Museum. In the 1980's, waves of surfers-turned-dealers and others traveled the islands, opening the field to collectors. The trading frenzy swept away many of the important pieces from Indonesia to private collectors and museums.

The sheer beauty and powerful imagery of the textiles inspire fascination. Nineteenth-century porilonjong ("long ikat") from Toraja in Sulawesi are graphic wonders. The largest textiles made in Southeast Asia, some are more than 15 feet long and almost 5 feet wide, and required a crew of women to tie the yarns to create the bold geometric patterns.

"Imagine, these were made on backstrap looms," Ms. Gittinger said.

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A version of this article appears in print on May 20, 2005, on Page E00033 of the National edition with the headline: Antiques; Textile Treasures of Asia And the Power of Cloth. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe